Nicholas Flamel

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This imaginative portrait of Nicolas Flamel dates from the nineteenth century.

Nicolas Flamel (traditionally c. 1330 – 1418) was a successful scrivener and manuscript-seller who developed a posthumous reputation as an alchemist due to his reputed work on the Philosopher's Stone.

An alchemical book, published in Paris in 1612 as Livre des figures hiéroglypiques and in London in 1624 as Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures was attributed to Flamel.1 It is a collection of designs purportedly commissioned by Flamel for a tympanum at the Cimetière des Innocents in Paris, long disappeared at the time the work was published. In the publisher's introduction Flamel's search for the Philosopher's Stone was described. According to that introduction, Flamel had made it his life's work to understand the text of a mysterious 21-page book he had purchased. The introduction claims that, around 1378, he traveled to Spain for assistance with translation. On the way back, he reported that he met a sage, who identified Flamel's book as being a copy of the original Book of Abraham. With this knowledge, over the next few years Flamel and his wife allegedly decoded enough of the book to successfully replicate its recipe for the Philosopher's Stone, producing first silver in 1382, and then gold.

According to the introduction to his work and additional details that have accrued since its publication, Flamel was the most accomplished of the European alchemists, and had learned his art from a Jewish converso on the road to Santiago de Compostela. "Others thought Flamel was the creation of 17th-century editors and publishers desperate to produce modern printed editions of supposedly ancient alchemical treatises then circulating in manuscript for an avid reading public," Deborah Harkness put it succinctly.2 The modern assertion that many references to him or his writings appear in alchemical texts of the 1500s, however, has not been linked to any particular source. The essence of his reputation is that he succeeded at the two magical goals of alchemy -- that he made the Philosopher's Stone which turns lead into gold, and that he and his wife Perenelle achieved immortality.

Flamel's house still stands in Paris, and is now the oldest house in the city. The ground floor contains a restaurant.

The house of Flamel in Paris, now a restaurant.
A closer shot of the Auberge Nicolas Flamel, June, 2008.

Contents

Life

During his lifetime, Flamel and his wife provided lodging and meals for the poor in their home, in exchange for prayer; they were devout Catholics. Later in life they were noted for their wealth and philanthropy.

Flamel lived into his 80s, and in 1410 designed his own tombstone, which was carved with arcane alchemical signs and symbols. Some believe that he died shortly after the tombstone was created. Later, a local criminal who wished to acquire Flamel's reputed gold went to Flamel's residence. Finding nothing, but undeterred, he was said then to have gone to the gravesite with only a spade and a lantern, and dug up the grave. Upon opening the coffin, he was disappointed to find an absence of gold, but shocked to find no trace of the corpse of Nicolas Flamel. Somecitation needed claim that it was just the grave of the wrong person who was not dead at the time, while others claim that he faked his own death, citing as evidence the fact that long after 1410 several books were published in his name. The tombstone is preserved at the Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Expanded accounts of his life are legendary. In addition to the mysterious book of 21 pages filled with encoded alchemical symbols and arcane writing, he may also have studied some texts in Hebrew. Interest in Flamel revived in the 19th century, and Victor Hugo mentioned him in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Eric Satie was intrigued by Flamel.3 Flamel is often referred to in late twentieth-century fictional works such as the Harry Potter books and movies as well as The Da Vinci Code.


In popular culture

Notes

  1. ^ Laurinda Dixon, ed., Nicolas Flamel, his Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures (1624) (New York: Garland) 1994.
  2. ^ Harkness, review of Dixon 1994 in Isis 89.1 (1998) p. 132.
  3. ^ Wilkins 1993.
  4. ^ JKRowling web page - rumour section

References

External links

Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 12 November 2008, at 22:35.

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